Candyman Review: A Substantial Twist On The Nightmare Once Again, Racism From Terror

Director: Nia DaCosta

Writers: Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, Nia DaCosta, Bernard Rose

Stars: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Kyle Kaminsky

Running Time: 1h 31m

Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Not a few viewers and even film analysts complain that Hollywood has become a factory for sequels, remakes and reboots; or so they say. The reality is that the growth in the number of different productions has been almost uninterrupted, partly thanks to streaming platforms in recent years. And, if what they release is a movie like Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021), the prim regrets are meaningless.

Originality in audiovisual narratives, and also in literary ones, has been revealed as a very rare characteristic; and it only arises from the slightly novel combination of the elements of any given story. Or, in the case of the seventh art for those who dedicate themselves by their profession and a sincere cinephile to examine each sequence and each shot, for their own style in the composition of moving images.

This industry has always been full of continuations and reformulated adventures, and the golden age syndrome that Midnight in Paris so pleasantly raises (Woody Allen, 2011), for example, should be banished once and for all. Above all, because there are remakes that overwhelmingly surpass the original film, and if we run into the unexpected taste of a proposal like Candyman.

The Exhilarating ‘Candyman’ Project

In itself, it should seem interesting to us with the filmmaker Jordan Peele being involved in it, who has directed such particular films as Let me go out (2016) and We (2019), among other things. Here he produces and signs the script with his colleague Win Rosenfeld (The Twilight Zone) and the director herself, who debuted in the thriller Crossing the line (2018) and, later, wanted to deal with the animated horror miniseries Ghost Tape (2020) with Aron Eli Coleite.

Thus, that the public and the workers of the critics were expectant before Candyman is due, on the one hand, to the fact that this new approach to the creepy character of the story The Forbidden, written by the novelist Clive Barker in 1986, was launched by the exhilarating Jordan Peele with Nia DaCosta at the helm, who has been chosen to later face The Marvels (2022).

On the other, we wanted to see how this ghostly feature would fit in with the supposed reflection of the first adaptation (Bernard Rose, 1992). To which there are fans of the genre that they hold in high esteem; not so with its two sequels, the pedestrian Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (Bill Condon, 1995) and Candyman: Day of the Dead (Turi Meyer, 1999). But we must warn viewers that this recent film is not what it seems, but a project with the position of The Suicide Squad (James Gunn, 2021).

The Millimeter Composition Of Nia Dacosta

The best we can say for Candyman is that we wish Marvel Studios, and executive producer Kevin Feige, would allow Nia DaCosta to do the same in The Marvels as Cate Shortland with Black Widow (2021); that is, to print your audiovisual style to make it look like a different film, although he does not get off the rails of cohesion in his Cinematic Universe.

Because this New York artist offers us with her second feature film a precise exercise down to the millimeter , with nothing free from her control, and she knows very well the emotional effect that she wants to produce in viewers at every moment. His stupendous ability to bring the ghostly concept of the apparitions to the screen, apart from them, and make it readily understandable is very gratifying; and in this way it gives us beautiful and strange visions without a supernatural component.

It is very clear that Nia DaCosta works wonderfully with the off-field, and her intelligent choices about the horror that she shows us openly, the one that allows us to glimpse and what she hides us, all with the necessary mixture to get intrigued , daze with restlessness and shudder as appropriate and that we resist taking our eyes off Candyman , are commendable. And they are far from the indie sobriety of Crossing the Line.

From The Crudely Simple To The Complex

The composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, who has collaborated in the vocal and synthesizer sections and the percussion in films such as Sicario, The Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2015, 2016) or Madre! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017), will be very happy to have been able to present us with his appropriate score, related to that of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind for The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), in an important film after another five without much relevance. In particular, because it contributes theirs to thin the nightmare of Candyman.

Like its cast, that the experience of the supernatural violence of it is plausible, from Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The great showman) in the skin of Anthony McCoy, Teyonah Parris (WandaVision) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Utopia) as Brianna and Troy Cartwright or Colman Domingo (The Knick) playing William Burke. Not one of their gestures can be blamed for them.

But what justifies the existence of Candyman, aside from Nia DaCosta’s stylized audiovisual device, is the substantial twist that Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld and herself have given to the origin of the monstrous spirit. Because it transforms the crudely simple posed, perhaps, by Clive Barker’s novel and, yes, Bernard Rose’s film into something complex; and, furthermore, he links it to the social reasons for which fright is unleashed in a much greater nexus. And, if to this we add the amazement that illuminates us at a certain moment to understand the nature of this work, we can only admit that it is the best on the fearsome spectrum of the hook.